Autonomy in Political Theories

Autonomy is a central concept for several different branches of philosophy, notably ethics and political philosophy. While hardly a neglected topic, it remains both controversial and difficult. The two books under consideration have the potential to be important contributions to the literature.

In this dissertation, I criticized the argument that in order to respect the autonomy of individuals, government must be neutral on questions of the good life. In Chapter 1, I discussed the concept of liberal neutrality, and presented a key argument neutralists use to defend it . In Chapter 2, I explored and cultivated Tocqueville's notion of local liberty to serve as a foundation to challenge the Argument from Respect for Individual Autonomy. In Chapter 3, I developed a political framework (...) that demonstrates how localized political perfectionism can cohere with both individual autonomy and the basic rights stressed by the liberal tradition since Locke. In Chapter 4, I addressed several predictable criticisms that might be raised against the framework developed in Chapter 3. In Chapter 5, I explored why the Argument from Respect for Individual Autonomy is unsound. Finally, I concluded with a general observation regarding the position of those who advocate liberal neutrality. (shrink)

Editors provide a substantive introduction to the history and theories of perfectionism and neutrality, expertly contextualizing the essays and making the collection accessible.

Most contemporary theories of justice pertain primarily to the world of adults, and so provide only implicit or vague suggestions as to how various ideals and norms of justice might apply to children. In this dissertation I attempt to remedy this gap or imbalance. To do so, I focus upon the norm of autonomy, and consider how social institutions might be arranged and resources might be distributed so as to allow for due respect---but also, at a prior stage, allow for (...) the proper cultivation---of persons' autonomy. In other words, I systematically argue that it is misguided to be concerned with respecting the autonomy of adults, if social arrangements have prevented many adults from developing their autonomy in the fast place, when they were children. ;Toward this end, I defend a conception of autonomy, in the first chapter, as the complex ability to effectively govern one's life according to one's own capacities and non-adapted preferences. I point out that this ability is one of degrees, whose development depends in large part upon the enjoyment of certain childhood conditions and resources. In the second chapter, I marshall evidence from the most recent empirical research , to reveal what specific conditions seem to lead, in point of fact, to a greater or lesser development of autonomy. In the third chapter, I argue that children who have been deprived of these various pre-conditions of autonomy have been seriously and wrongfully harmed; and I defend the state as being morally justified, perhaps even obligated, to intervene to redress such harm. The final two chapters are devoted to the ethical evaluation of practical interventions that would feasibly protect children from such "arrested development harm," within their home and school environments, respectively. Accordingly, in chapter four, I provide a model of parental licensing . In the fifth and final chapter, I advocate an Educational Sufficiency Standard that would mandate a certain set of minimally adequate grade school conditions, where these conditions, in turn, would support children's assimilation of essential building blocks of autonomy. In these ways, I argue that any just society will insure that its children are provided with whatever is necessary for their development of at least minimal autonomy. (shrink)

Communitarian writers argue that social identity is deeply important to individual autonomy and thus liberal societies have an obligation to recognize identity. Any liberal view that attempts to account for this charge must specify a procedure to recognize identity that also ensures that the liberal sense of autonomy is not weakened. In this article, I develop such an account. I argue that liberals must distinguish an identity that belongs to particular persons (particularized identity) from the collective form of that identity. (...) For instance, Naisha will have her own particularized way of being Indian in addition to the collective form of the culture that she shares with others. To determine which acts would be about recognizing the particularized form, I provide a counterfactual test. One major implication of the test is that special collective rights would not be endorsed. At the same time, the test is not equivalent to the liberal positions of insisting either that rights belong to individuals or that individuals are not harmed. Because identity is almost always viewed in terms of groups, valuing identity seems to be at odds with the principles of liberalism and democratic theory in which individual persons are the ultimate source of value. I show that there is a significant way to recognize identity that is harmonious with these principles. (shrink)

Based on the ongoing work of the agenda-setting Future of Minority Studies national research project, Identity Politics Reconsidered reconceptualizes the scholarly and political significance of social identity. It focuses on the deployment of “identity” within ethnic-, women’s-, disability-, and gay and lesbian studies in order to stimulate discussion about issues that are simultaneously theoretical and practical, ranging from ethics and epistemology to political theory and pedagogical practice. This collection of powerful essays by both well-known and emerging scholars offers original answers (...) to questions concerning the analytical legitimacy of “identity” and “experience,” and the relationships among cultural autonomy, moral universalism, and progressive politics. (shrink)

The debate over encumbered versus unencumbered selves that characterized the dialogue between liberalism and republicanism did not end well. Neither side seemed enlightened by its encounter with the other, as it became increasingly difficult to pin down the differences between the sides, never more so than when Michael Sandel was violently agreeing with Richard Dagger. Drawing on the work of novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch, this essay argues that Sandel could have made a much stronger argument for his view than (...) he did. Sandel need not have conceded or concluded that encumbered selves are unable to choose freely. Freedom is a more subtle and complicated concept that either Sandel or Dagger recognize. (shrink)

Introduction : the politics of our selves -- Foucault, subjectivity, and the enlightenment : a critical reappraisal -- The impurity of practical reason : power and autonomy in Foucault -- Dependency, subordination, and recognition : Butler on subjection -- Empowering the lifeworld? autonomy and power in Habermas -- Contextualizing critical theory -- Engendering critical theory.

In this anthology of new and classic articles, fifteen noted feminist philosophers explore contemporary ethical issues that uniquely affect the lives of women. These issues in applied ethics include autonomy, responsibility, sexual harassment, women in the military, new technologies for reproduction, surrogate motherhood, pornography, abortion, nonfeminist women and others. Whether generated by old social standards or intensified by recent technology, these dilemmas all pose persistent, 'nagging,' questions that cry out for answers.

The opposition between the piqueteros and the government has shifted the battleground between capital and work. If in the past, confrontation focused on salary, today the growing precariousness of work has transformed the struggle of the piqueteros and the unemployed into a fight for survival. As a result of this, their objectives are the same as those of immaterial workers : autonomous and independent and exploited by capital through the network of productive cooperation which they have established among themselves.

The present work is to be a critique of Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance as well as putting forth an alternative analytical tool when constructing societies known as the L’echelle Naturelle. My paper hopes to argue that inequalities in a society are not only essential in society contrary to Rawls’ Egalitarian ideology, but do in fact contain equality so long as the autonomy of the citizen is fully exercisable. I contend that institutions such as government and their extensions namely the law, (...) have debilitated the exercisability of autonomy. The consequence of that is an artificial hierarchy monopolized by a minority rather than a natural hierarchy where every citizen is a means unto themselves. The phenomenon of a natural hierarchy that is made possible by unchained autonomy is what the L’echelle Naturelle hopes to expound upon in the forthcoming work. (shrink)

The 1970s and 1980s meant an ethnic politicization of the indigenous movement in Ecuador, until this moment defined largely as a class-based movement of indigenous peasants. The indigenous organizations started to conceptualize indigenous peoples as nationalities with their own economic, social, cultural and legal structures and therefore with the right to autonomy and self-determination. Based on this conceptualization, the movement developed demands for a pluralist reform of state and society in order to install a plurinational state with wide degrees of (...) autonomy and participation for indigenous nationalities. A part of those demands was the double strategy to fight for legal pluralism while already installing it at the local level. Even if some degrees of legal pluralism have been recognized in Ecuador since the mid-1990s, in practice, the local de facto practice prevails until today. Another central part of the demand for plurinationality is the representation of indigenous peoples in the legislative organs of the state, developing since their first appearance in the 1940s in a complex way. This article will analyze the development of right-based demands within the discourse of the indigenous movement in Ecuador, the visions of the implied state-reform and the organizational and political background and implication they have. Based on an analysis of the central texts of the indigenous organizations, conceptualizations of rights and laws and their appropriation within an autonomist discourse and a local practice will be highlighted. (shrink)

Human dignity consists of freedom. Yet freedom simultaneously means both autonomy and heteronomy, being an absolute and relation. As an absolute a human is in the realm of being , and as relative in the realm of having . Without "alterity" or "otherness" there is no having. The following aspects of social life must be distinguished: social transcendentals, categories, institutions and groups. The state , for example, cannot be equated with politics . Of the categories , the former are conditions, (...) the latter guiding instances. In the absence of a logical interplay between these conditions and guiding instances, one abides in abstraction. The interplay, the relation between them, is not random. Today economy has become a guiding instance. This attempt can never be finally consummated. Without private property, production is impossible. But private property needs to be universalized, justified and thus requires law. Law is always intrinsically pre-positive, but just as the economy cannot be realized without law, law cannot be enforced without politics. Politics determines law; however without a political element, law remains, although real, nevertheless powerless, impractical. Justification, of which political decisions are also in need, is post-positive law. In relation to law, a purely rational foundation for legislation is insufficient and thus impractical. Consequently there is a) pre-positive law as universally recognized by society; b) positive law as established by the political instances; c) post-positive law as the sphere from which politicians justify their legislation. This differentiation is necessary to illuminate the specific duality of conditions and guiding instances. A politician never simply acts on mandate or as proxy for the general will of the people. Post-positive law thus always involves a certain ethical position as a criterion for decision-making. Yet religion is that instance which imparts final practicability, effective force to ethics. In short, no social sub-system can exercise total or despotic power over the others. Any mistake in this respect makes the entire social stratum abstracter and less constituted. Die Würde des Menschen besteht in seiner Freiheit; Freiheit aber bedeutet gleichermaßen Autonomie und Heteronomie, zugleich absolut und Verhältnis sein. Als Absolutes tritt der Mensch in den Bereich des Seins, als Relatives in den Bereich des Habens. Ohne "Alterität" oder "Andersheit" gibt es kein Haben. Im gesellschaftlichen Leben sind zu unterscheiden: gesellschaftliche Transzendentalien, Kategorien, Institutionen und Gruppen. Der Staat ist z.B. nicht mit Politik gleichzusetzen. Bei den Kategorien sind die ersteren Bedingungen, die letzteren sind Leitinstanzen. Ohne diese Logik der Bedingungen und Leitinstanzen bleibt nur das Verharren in der Abstraktion. Das Spiel, das Verhältnis zwischen den einen und den anderen ist nicht beliebig. Heute ist Wirtschaft Leitinstanz. Dieser Versuch kann nie endgültig gelingen. Ohne Privateigentum ist kein Erwirtschaften möglich. Jenes bedarf aber einer Verallgemeinerung, einer Rechtfertigung und fordert damit die Präsenz des Rechts. Das Recht ist immer wesentlich vorpositiv, aber genau wie die Wirtschaft ohne das Recht nicht realisierbar ist, ist das Recht ohne Politik auch nicht vollstreckbar. Die Politik setzt das Recht; ohne ein politisches Element jedoch bleibt das Recht zwar reell, aber machtlos, unpraktisch. Die Rechtfertigung, der auch die politische Entscheidung bedarf, ist nach-positives Recht. In bezug auf das Recht ist eine reine Vernunftbegründung des Gesetzes unzulänglich und deshalb unpraktisch. Kurz: es gibt a) vor-positives Recht als das von der Gesellschaft allgemein anerkanntes Recht; b) positives Recht als das von der politischen Instanz gesetztes Recht; c) nach-positives Recht als die Sphäre aus der die Politiker die Begründung ihrer Gesetzgebung schöpfen. Diese Unterscheidung ist notwendig, um die spezifische Dualität von Bedingungen und Leitungsinstanzen besser ans Licht zu bringen. Der Politiker ist nie ein reiner Mandatar oder Bevollmächtigter des allgemeinen Volkswillens. Im nach-positiven Recht ist daher das Entscheidungskriterium immer eine gewisse ethische Position. Die Religion ist jedoch diejenige Instanz, die der Ethik letzte Praktizität, effektive Gewalt, verleiht. Kurz gesagt: kein gesellschaftliches Subsystem kann über die anderen total oder despotisch verfügen. Ein Irrtum diesbezüglich macht das ganze soziale Gefüge abstrakter, unkonstituierter. (shrink)

In Democratic Authority, David Estlund 2008 presents a major new defense of democracy, called epistemic proceduralism. The theory claims that democracy exercises legitimate authority in virtue of possessing a modest epistemic power: its decisions are the product of procedures that tend to produce just laws at a better than chance rate, and better than any other type of government that is justifiable within the terms of public reason. The balance Estlund strikes between epistemic and non-epistemic justifications of democracy is open (...) to question, both for its neglect of the roles of non-epistemic values of equality and collective autonomy in democracy, and for the ways his use of the public reason standard overshadows empirically based epistemic arguments for democracy. Nevertheless, Estlund presents telling critiques of rival theories and develops a sophisticated alternative that illuminates some central normative features of democracy. (shrink)

A deliberative democracy is a society committed to the ideal of reasoned political deliberation as the source of legitimate laws and policies. Recently, the role that citizens' religious convictions should play in political deliberation has been the subject of much philosophical debate. I enter this debate by rejecting the claim that participants in political deliberations must refrain from basing their political proposals on their religious convictions. I argue that citizens and legislators may freely base their political proposals on their religious (...) convictions without violating any principles of democratic political morality. I also develop a "pluralist" model of political dialogue that shows how the adherents of conflicting religious and non-religious perspectives can engage in mutually respectful political deliberations even in the absence of a shared moral vocabulary. ;In addition to the role of religion in political deliberation, I consider the relationship between religion and the law. At issue is how to interpret two constitutional provisions relating to religion: the right to religious non-establishment and the right to religious free exercise. I argue that the "separationist" conception of religious non-establishment, which holds that all laws lacking a secular justification constitute prohibited establishments of religion, is mistaken. Legislators do not violate the right to religious non-establishment when they enact laws based on their religious-moral convictions. ;I defend an interpretation of the right to religious free exercise according to which the state should not interfere with people's religious practices unless it is necessary to pursue compelling state interests that cannot be pursued in a less restrictive way. I use this "pro-exemptions" interpretation of religious freedom to determine the correct resolution of a particular case, Mozert v. Hawkins, which pits the state's educational interests in promoting autonomous religious commitment against a group of fundamentalists' interest in passing their religious beliefs on to their children. I claim that the fundamentalists should win the case because while the state does have a compelling interest in promoting religious autonomy, the educational programs used to promote autonomy in American public schools have serious flaws that undermine their status as the "least restrictive means" to the state's legitimate educational ends. (shrink)

Can rights constitutionalism operate as a social democratic restraint on private power? How should we assess this? Following renewed interest in social democratic legal theory, some propose developing more egalitarian forms of rights constitutionalism as a counterweight to overweening private power in the global economy. Such strategies follow a normative methodology, associated with liberal accounts of legality which emphasize the autonomy of law as an external means of social change. This can be contrasted with traditional social democratic accounts of law (...) as an artifact produced through and in political struggle. This shift of focus to normative argument is at the expense of contextual diagnosis, which remains valuable in questioning whether constitutional strategies can restrain private power in the name of substantive equality. Rights constitutionalism, reflecting its classical liberal roots, continues to protect private power in important ways.; Two strategies, based in innovations in North American and European constitutionalism respectively, have been proposed to overcome this default. First, the Application to State Institutions model seeks to extend the reach of constitutional application to include private actors, and; second the Application to Law model seeks to extend the scope of rights by requiring all law to conform to constitutional guarantees, including equality. A sociologically grounded analysis of the comparative jurisprudence shows these models retain key elements of the classical liberal framework, such as the state-civil society distinction, and which have in practice militated against any significant democratization of private power. (shrink)

Were the poleis of Classical Greece state-based or stateless communities? Do their political structures meet standard criteria for full statehood? Conventional wisdom maintains that they do noto According to a broad consensus, the Classical polis was neither state-based nor stateless as such, but something somewhere in between: a unique, category-defying formation that was somehow both 'state' and 'society' simultaneously, a kind of inseparable fusion of the two. The current paper offers an alternative perspective on this complex but fundamental issue. It (...) questions prevailing views on theoretical grounds, suggesting that the consensus 'fusionist' position rests ultimately upon a misunderstanding of what Thomas Hobbes would call the 'personality' of polis political structures. Focusing on the case of Classical Athens, it then proceeds to present a new account of the Greek 'state', an account that aims to be both .theoretically satisfying and heuristically use fuI. Even if all those who performed state functions were simultaneously constituents of polis 'society', the state was nevertheless perceived to function as an autonomous agency, possessing a corporate personality that was quite distinct from the individual personalities of the living, breathing citizens who happened to instantiate it at any particular time. (shrink)

Should society intervene to prevent the risky behavior of precocious teenagers even if it would be impermissible to intervene with adults who engage in the same risky behavior? The problem is well illustrated by the legal case of the 13-year-old Dutch girl Laura Dekker, who set out in 2009 to become the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone, succeeding in January 2012. In this paper we use her case as a point of entry for discussing the fundamental (...) question of how to demarcate childhood from adulthood. After summarizing the case, we identify a ‘demarcation dilemma’ that frames much of the public and expert debate. On the one hand, it seems morally imperative ‘to treat like alike’, which means that both children and adults should be allowed to undertake all actions for which they have the relevant competences. On the other hand, requiring proportional treatment of children and adults seems to neglect the special nature of childhood as a distinct stage in life that ends at a specific age. We introduce the notion of a ‘regime of childhood’ to deal with this problem. This regime includes several dimensions, including the limited liability for children, the supervisory responsibilities of parents, the role of age-based thresholds, and the overarching purpose of childhood as a context for developing autonomy. We argue that, all things considered, there are good reasons not to shift to a regime that offers individual children the option of qualifying for adulthood on the basis of age-neutral criteria. (shrink)

Whether for good purposes or bad, coercion is one extremely important and effective means of getting someone to do something. Unfortunately, recent philosophical discussions of the concept have lost sight of how agents use it, as well as what makes it possible to use it or be subject to it. After an introductory chapter, Chapter 2 of this dissertation shows that, beginning with Robert Nozick's seminal essay "Coercion" , philosophers have tended to psychologize the concept. By focusing on its psychology, (...) recent theories of coercion fail to distinguish it from other, clearly non-coercive phenomena, and also fail to recognize coercion that has become regularized and pervasive. ;The dissertation defends a theory of coercion that focuses on the coercer and the sort of act coercion is: what its purpose is, how an agent can employ it, and how it can be distinguished from related acts. Force and violence are model means for imposing a practical necessity on a human agent because of the way they can disrupt an agent's ability to satisfy her basic needs for goods like life, health, bodily integrity, sustenance, and freedom of movement. Chapter 3 argues that coercion can be understood as one agent imposing a practical necessity on the actions of another in pursuit of purposes the coercer chooses, and illustrates this by a study of the uses of force and violence. ;Chapters 4 and 5 clarify the concept of practical necessity, and use that analysis to identify coercion by economic means within the context of a complex economy. Starting from Anscombe's work on rule-governed practices and practical inference, the dissertation develops an account of practical necessity that shows how practical necessity frames various aspects of an agent's choice of actions. The dissertation goes on to argue that certain economic practices may be necessary, but not coercive, while arguing that practices such as policing, which provide members of society with security from attack, are almost always coercive. ;Chapter 6 demonstrates the usefulness of this approach by applying it in investigations of several aspects of Anglo-American gender relations, in particular, the legal histories rape and sexual harassment. (shrink)

Christian List and Philip Pettit argue that some groups qualify as rational agents over and above their members. Examples include churches, commercial corporations, and political parties. According to the theory developed by List and Pettit, these groups qualify as agents because they have beliefs and desires and the capacity to process them and to act on their basis. Moreover, the alleged group agents are said to be rational to a high degree and even to be fit to be held morally (...) responsible. And the group agents under consideration are autonomous, according to the List-Pettit Theory, because their beliefs and desires cannot easily be reduced to the beliefs and desires of the groups’ members. I want to show that we should not accept the List-Pettit Theory, because it implies the absurd claim that instrument-user units, like car-driver units, are rational agents over and above their user-parts, say drivers. The focus of my argument is on whether instrument-user units are autonomous in relation to their user-parts on the List-Pettit Theory. (shrink)

What can sovereignty mean in a liberal democratic world order? Can sovereignty be made consistent with liberal understandings of legitimate politics? This inquiry attempts to assess how liberal thought addresses sovereignty's relationship to boundaries. In its most traditional usage, sovereignty generally refers to a government's power as being supreme within territorial boundaries and autonomous from governments outside those borders. More controversially, however, this study explores how sovereignty crosses intellectual boundaries as well as geographic ones, describing domains of public life variously (...) viewed as legal, political, and moral. Sovereignty describes not only the power of governments, but also often refers to the legitimate authority behind that power. It refers not only to the holders of power, but also to the terms on which that power is held. It both identifies public coercive force, and justifies obedience to that force so that its actual use is unnecessary. In other words, sovereignty is both an empirical and normative concept. As a result, its role in modern political thought--liberal and non-liberal--is widely contested. ;Liberal political theorists have been reconsidering the many faces of sovereignty for more than two centuries. Our current plural understandings of sovereignty are shaped by how the earliest liberals confronted their absolutist predecessors' use of the concept. The analytical issues involved cannot be removed from the historical problems which absolutist and democratic thinkers originally hoped to solve, as well as the problems which they created as a result. To assess the domestic and international, empirical and normative autonomy implied by the concept's continued use, I propose returning to "the centuries-old doctrine of absolute and exclusive sovereignty" and that doctrine's first liberal democratic challengers. Their successes and failures shed important light on today's various uses and on attempts to transform the concept once more. (shrink)

Whether children have rights is a debate that in recent years has spilled over into all areas of public life. It has never been more topical than now as the assumed rights of parents over their children is challenged on an almost daily basis. David Archard offers the first serious and sustained philosophical examination of children and their rights. Archard reviews arguments for and against according children rights. He concludes that every child has at least the right to the best (...) possible upbringing. Denying that parents have any significant rights over their children, he is able to challenge current thinking about the proper roles of state and family in rearing children. Crucially, he considers the problem of how to define and understand `child abuse'. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that Sen's defence of liberal democracy suffers from a moralistic and pro-liberal bias that renders it unable to take pluralism as seriously as it professes to do. That is because Sen’s commitment to respecting pluralism is not matched by his account of how to individuate the sorts of preferences that ought to be included in democratic deliberation. Our argument generalises as a critique of the two most common responses to the fact of pluralism in contemporary (...) (i.e. post-Rawls) liberalism: a broadly procedural understanding of autonomy and the idea of deliberative democracy. That is to say, the difficulties with pluralism we identify can be traced back to the particular version of Kantian deontology prevalent in contemporary liberalism, and to the equally prevalent aspiration to ground political legitimacy in a moralised consensus. (shrink)

Although the need of freedom is definite, the concept of individual freedom, while being interpreted with legal terms, causes not only theoretical, but also practical problems. The observed two extremes of freedom are defined as any human self-expression as well as the license, where the state power is generally attributed to disregard personal freedom. In this article the freedom of expression and state enforcement jurisdiction dichotomy are addressed by discussing positive and negative conceptions of freedom and the relationship between the (...) interpretations of political liberalism and Kant and Hegel‘s philosophies. This paper aims to prove that the positive liberty is the assumption of the negative liberty. The paper based on Hegel‘s philosophy shows that freedom is the characteristic of human nature to seek identity. It is also argued that human identity can take many forms and, therefore, a person has a number of inherent rights and liberties. It is human psycho-physical identity that provides the right to life and health care; human creative identity, providing the right to privacy and freedom of occupation; human moral identity, which provides the right of dignity, and the moral autonomy of person’s social and political identity, providing the political and social rights and freedoms. This article concludes that while a person uses the given rights with integrity and the state is limiting people’s arbitrariness, there is no conflict between the freedom and state violation. (shrink)

Paternalism involves a situation in which A interferes with B primarily to protect B from the harmful consequences of his own actions. To determine if such intervention can be justified a detailed analysis of paternalism is necessary. This is provided in the first chapter. ;In the second chapter possible strategies of justification are examined. Employing Mill's essay On Liberty as a source from which a principle of justification takes shape, I maintain that he advocates paternalism where it furthers individuality, as (...) opposed to mere freedom; and I try to show how such acts are consistent with, even if not derived solely from, utilitarianism. ;The meaning and value of individuality are considered in chapter three. Individuality is understood in terms of one's having a value ordering and the capacity to choose and act accordingly. Personal value orderings, in turn, provide a sense of identity and esteem so far as they issue from a process that invokes personal traits. I then apply these findings to various forms of strong paternalism. ;Weak paternalism is discussed in chapter four. Here I explain how proponents employ the relationship between consent, voluntary agency, and self-determination in attempting to justify certain interventions and to proscribe others, some of which are sanctioned by strong paternalism. ;My next task is to elaborate on the significance of consent. After reviewing various consent modes appealed to at the level of justification--prior, subsequent, and hypothetical--I conclude that only prior consent functions in this way, and even then only in a small minority of cases in which intervention seems plausible. The implications for competing versions of paternalism are then considered. ;The final chapter consists in adjudicating the strong/weak paternalist polemic. In effecting a compromise I argue that weak paternalists fix too narrowly the moral limits of self-determination while strong paternalists fix them too widely. A concluding summation follows. (shrink)

Charles Taylor argues that recognition begins with the politics of "self-image," as groups represented in the past by others in ways harmful to their own identity replace negative historical self-images with positive ones of their own making. Given the centrality of "self image" to his politics of recognition, it is striking that Taylor, himself, represents disabled people in language that is both limiting and depreciating. The author argues such negative self-images are not unique to Taylor but endemic to modern political (...) thought from John Locke to John Rawls, as the disabled are constituted in direct opposition to the rational person and/or citizen. Using contemporary social theories of disability, as articulated by disabled scholars and advocates, the author concludes that such negative self-images must be purged from political theory and replaced with an alternative theory of personhood/citizenship rooted in the image of interdependency. (shrink)

Some theorists who accept the existence of global justice duties to alleviate the condition of distant needy strangers hold that these duties are significantly constrained by special ties to fellow countrymen. The patriotic priority thesis holds that morality requires the members of each nation-state to give priority to helping needy fellow compatriots over more needy distant strangers. Three arguments for constraint and patriotic priority are examined in this essay: an argument from fair play, one from coercion, another from coercion and (...) autonomy. Under scrutiny, none of these arguments qualifies as successful. (shrink)

In this dissertation I develop a general theory of coercion that allows one to distinguish cases of interpersonal coercion from cases of persuasion or manipulation, and cases of institutional coercion from cases of oppression. The general theory of coercion that I develop includes as one component a theory of second-order coercion. Second-order coercion takes place whenever one person intentionally impairs the formation of the second-order desires of another person, or constrains them after their formation, in a way that frustrates or (...) eliminates the possibility of the victim fulfilling certain of his or her first-order desires. The concept of second-order coercion is important because it suggests that a person's autonomy may be violated in ways that have not been previously recognized. In this dissertation I argue that the unique feature of all cases of coercion is that the alternatives available to the victim, with regard to the formation of his or her will, are intentionally constrained by another person in a way that violates the victim's autonomy. A general theory of coercion should be able to explain how institutions may be understood as coercive. I argue that if institutions are understood as social practices maintained for the purpose of achieving some end, then they may be properly understood as capable of coercion. ;This theory of coercion allows me to make two arguments concerning moral responsibility. First, I argue that current discussions of moral responsibility are inadequate because they fail to take seriously the claim that a person may be responsible, at least in part, for having the beliefs and desires that make a particular action a case of coercion. Second, I argue that discussions of moral responsibility are inadequate because they fail to recognize that an agent may not be responsible for the state of his or her will because he or she may have been coerced in a way that has not been previously recognized. (shrink)

Reseña de Nys, T., Denier, Y., Vandevelde, T. (eds.): 2007, Autonomy and Paternalism. Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Health Care. Lovaina: Peeters.

The question of political obligation seems to involve several interrelated issues. See Hanna Pitkin, "Obligation and Consent-I," American Political Science Review, LIX , p. 991. ;John Rawls, A Theory of Justice , p. 27. ; I propose, moreover, that the consent-utilitarian framework can, to a reasonable degree, account for the main positive features in the other major perspectives on political obligation . Such features include a respect for individuality, a respect for fundamental rights, and a concern for the common good. (...) At the same time, this framework, I believe, avoids the main weaknesses of the other perspectives. Such weaknesses include the possibility of chaos, the possibility of tyrannical or irresponsible government, and a disregard for the well-being of others. Are there, then, any limits to the consent-utilitarian framework? That is, does this framework provide all the necessary and sufficient grounds for political obligation? This question is one of my concerns when finally I examine the issue of disobedience to the state. ;It is necessary to address certain major criticisms or questions that might be raised or have been raised against the two conditions proposed here. For example, is not the concept of 'consent of the governed' a fiction after all, especially when we have to consider modern states? Furthermore, how is political obligation to be determined with respect to dissenting and indifferent minorities, that is, those who have not given any consent? On the other hand, does utilitarianism not seem to run counter to our common moral intuitions regarding principles of justice and the intrinsic value of certain social rules? Should we not agree with John Rawls that "utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons"? ;We may reasonably assume that the citizen can achieve his full potential only within the state, that it is only within the state he is able to fulfil his highest aspirations. If we may assume, furthermore, that the citizen desires to fulfil his highest aspirations, which thus makes life within the state necessary, then it becomes an essential task of political philosophy to examine what the proper relationship between citizen and state should be. In other words, a central task of political philosophy is to search for and, hopefully, to discover those grounds which appear necessary and sufficient for political obligation. ;I propose that the conditions of consent and a utilitarian perspective provide generally adequate justification for political obligation. More specifically, I argue that only an actual consent by the citizen to the state can provide one of the grounds for political obligation, that a mere hypothetical consent falls short of providing this ground. Only an actual consent seems consistent with the view of ourselves as autonomous moral agents, freely choosing our fate. In this respect, I therefore consider as particularly significant the consent formulations developed by Hobbes and Rousseau. In addition, I argue that the acceptable state must seek ends which are most beneficial and valuable to its citizens, given the assumption that the citizens desire those ends which are beneficial and valuable to them. Hence, a utilitarian perspective becomes a basic condition for political obligation. (shrink)

The paper links Cavell's early criticism of Rawls's “Two Concepts of Rules” to the later criticism of TJ. In his early paper, Rawls enacts a certain type of foundationalist response to the practical skeptic, commonly referred to nowadays as the constitutive move. While sympathetic to the move itself, Cavell's criticism targets a conception of the nature of moral discussion that arises when the move is as it were read into ordinary moral encounters. Cavell's later criticism rehearses the structure of its (...) precursor. In TJ, the conversation of justice takes the shape of seeking legitimacy, aiming at a level where the limits of our responsibility are predetermined and clearly marked. But this shape stifles the possibility of the kind of conversation whose point is to assess, here and now, what our identification with our society amounts to and what the significance of the choices we make as members of this society exactly is. Having the structure of the earlier criticism in view furthers the understanding of Emersonian Moral Perfectionism, and sheds light on some of its enigmatic features, such as the relevance of Kant's notion of reflective judgment to moral thinking and the essentiality of the friend to perfectionist assent. (shrink)

From a juridical standpoint, Kant ardently upholds the state's right to impose the death penalty in accordance with the law of retribution. At the same time, from an ethical standpoint, Kant maintains a strict proscription against suicide. The author proposes that this latter position is inconsistent with and undercuts the former. However, Kant's division between external (juridical) and internal (moral) lawgiving is an obstacle to any argument against Kant's endorsement of capital punishment based on his own disapprobation of suicide. Nevertheless, (...) Kant's basic conception of autonomy underlies both of these otherwise distinct forms of lawgiving, such that acts of suicide and capital punishment are rendered equally irrational within his overall framework. (shrink)

There is a shared conviction that human beings have a right to life. This dissertation shows how the shared moral conviction that all human beings have a natural right to life may be analyzed according to two fundamentally distinct ways of viewing the role of moral judgments and intuitions in forming a social, moral theory; and that a great deal of confusion results about this right, i.e., about the strength of this right, who has it, and under what circumstances it (...) is the fundamental justification for action some think it is, if the two underlying modes are not carefully distinguished. Illustrative examples showing this confusion are drawn from the conflict situations involving abortion. ;According to one view, which falls into the tradition of objectivism in ethics associated with rational intuitionism, morality is part of the nature of things; it is an authoritative order external to human thinking, purposes, or society. Moral intuitions are held to represent the apprehension of objective moral properties. ;On an alternative view, morality is a human creation, a device; it has no objective reality in the traditional sense and is grounded in individual human needs and ends. At the root of the view is an appreciation of the social role of morality and a commitment to a conception of the person suitable for constructing moral principles. The justification for the authority of a constructivist view has much to do with the notions of 'coherence' and 'considered judgments' as the result of 'reflective equilibrium'. ;Chapters I and II critically evaluate some ways of "connecting" humanness and natural rights which depend on the traditional view of moral objectivity. Chapters III and IV distinguish an alternative--namely, constructivism, according to which moral principles are 'reasonable' rather than 'true'. Judgments about natural rights affirm equal freedom and autonomy as fundamental elements of the conception of the person. The final chapter highlights some conclusions to be drawn with respect to issues in abortion dealing with rights conflicts. On the constructivist kind of view, the fetus is regarded as a different kind of thing from the mother. (shrink)

This dissertation challenges liberal theories of political legitimacy by questioning the foundational status of autonomy in the spheres of consent and political obligation. I propose that we conceptualize political legitimacy as a condition of the mind and body in rapture, not as the accordance of power with law or principle. Nevertheless, one of my main contentions is that experiences such as assimilation, imitation, rapture, or what I call "self-loss," are not categorically opposed to liberal conceptions of autonomy. I see such (...) experiences as part of a continuous movement between self-loss and self-assertion that is constitutive of human identity. In the first chapter, I propose incorporating experiences of self-loss into the theorization of political legitimacy by questioning the pertinence of modern rationalist and social-scientific accounts of legitimacy to the perspective of those for whom power is legitimate. I then proceed with three chapters in which I elucidate the affinities between ancient, early modern and contemporary conceptualizations of identity and power. My main interlocutors in this respect are Plato, Thomas Hobbes, and Judith Butler. With my comments on these authors, I advance the argument that the experience of power can become both meaningful and conducive to self-assertion even without presupposing the autonomy or consent of political actors. Through further readings of Plato, as well as of Herodotus and Xenophon, I explore philosophical, fictional and historical depictions of techne, which I interpret as the cunning exercise of self-assertion under the guise of self-effacement. In the final chapter, I posit the idea of assertive self-loss against contemporary fears about the effects of technology on political autonomy. I argue that technology presents less of a threat to autonomy and political legitimacy as much as a way of being human that is capable of unexpected ways of asserting itself in the very course of becoming lost in the worlds of artifacts that embrace it. (shrink)

For Alexis de Tocqueville, a faithful son of the Enlightenment, the priority given to the individual in the pursuit of truth represents the starting point of an inexorable march of equality towards individual autonomy. In other words, in agreement with the historicist movements of the 19th Century, Tocqueville interprets history as a dialectical progress: History understood as progress in the Hegelian sense, whose becoming unfolds in virtue of a steady and unalterable progress towards a better society-civilization as a creation of (...) the illustrated man. However, while for Hegel progress obeys a reason understood as self-knowledge, Tocqueville understands it as a balance between antagonisms: liberty-individual-democracy. In other words, the Tocquevillian dualism, expressed in the permanent tension between antagonisms equality vs. freedom, the individual vs the citizen–, leads towards a new class of dialectics of liberty. In this sense, the aforementioned triad represents, precisely, the tension that reveals itself as problematic, given that, ultimately, the elements that compose it arise antithetically. (shrink)